Not just any dessert but sweets with lemon, berries, or cakes with cream cheese frosting. I have three lovely spring desserts this week.

My Lemon Berry Trifle is one of my all-time favorite desserts. I adore trifles and this one is exceptional. When I serve it people rave and roll their eyes. You won’t believe how easy it is. I bake a boxed lemon cake according to package directions and buy a raspberry sauce. Solo makes an amazing raspberry and pastry sauce available in the cake section (but it’s not always stocked). If you can’t find that, you can use a raspberry pie filling.

If you want to make your own raspberry sauce, that’s easy, too, but requires a lot of berries. To make homemade sauce, simply bring ⅓ cup water, ⅔ cup sugar, and 3 cups of raspberries to a strong simmer for 8-10 minutes until the sauce thickens and the berries fall apart. Remove it from the heat and cool completely before using. It is significantly less expensive to buy a premade sauce, just fyi.

I brought blackberry cobbler to our Easter celebration last week and I was torn on whether to create a cake-like topping or one with more of a pie crust. Traditionally, my family are pie crust cobbler eaters and I love both. I decided to take a risk and create a more cake-like topping. Everyone loved it. Really, the key to amazing blackberry cobbler for me is lots of blackberries and then serve it hot ala mode. You can’t go wrong with warm blackberry cobbler and melting vanilla ice cream. It’s an incredibly easy recipe and you can substitute fresh fruit when it’s in season.

Lastly, I have a delightful carrot cake recipe. One of my best friends baked this for me for my birthday because she knows I love carrot cake. She found the recipe on a blog and it’s wonderful. The one thing I changed was the frosting because the original cake does not have enough frosting to cover the entire cake and cream cheese frosting is my favorite aspect of carrot cake. So I doubled the recipe, added a little more sugar and some vanilla extract. The cake recipe was left intact. The cake is fluffy, light, moist and delicious. It is also an easy carrot cake recipe.

You want to make the frosting just before icing the cake so it is easy to spread. If you are not ready to serve it, refrigerate the cake because there’s dairy in the frosting.

I hope you enjoy a beautiful spring day and savor one of these desserts. Enjoy!

Look at these luscious layers of lemon, raspberry and cream. This dessert is incredible!(Photo: Juliana Goodwin)

Bake cake according to package directions. If you don’t want to bake a cake, you can buy a lemon pound cake to use in this recipe.

For the sauce, whisk together sweetened condensed milk, lemon juice, yogurt and half the container of Cool Whip.

Cut cake into 1-inch pieces and place half the cake in a trifle dish or bowl. Pour half the lemon mixture over it. Pour half the raspberry mixture over the lemon. Then top with remaining cake, lemon mixture, raspberry sauce and smooth the rest of the Cool Whip on top. Garnish with fresh raspberries. You can serve immediately but this benefits from resting at least 2 hours in the refrigerator. You can make this a day in advance, if desired.

This carrot cake is moist and chock-full of goodness with raisins, walnuts and a rich cream cheese frosting.(Photo: Juliana Goodwin)

Carrot Cake

Makes 1 double layer cake or 24 cupcakes

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon kosher salt

1 ½ teaspoons ground cinnamon

1 ¼ cups canola or other vegetable oil

1 cup granulated sugar

1 cup lightly packed brown sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

4 large eggs

3 cups grated peeled carrots (5 to 6 medium carrots)

1 cup coarsely chopped pecans

½ cup raisins

Frosting

16 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature

3 cups powdered sugar

⅔ cup heavy cream

1 teaspoon vanilla

½ cup coarsely chopped pecans, for topping cake

Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease two 9-inch round cake pans and line the bottom with parchment paper then grease the top of the paper. Or, grease and flour the bottom and sides of both pans.

In a medium bowl, whisk flour, baking soda, salt, and the cinnamon until well blended. In a separate bowl, whisk the oil, sugars and vanilla. Whisk in eggs, one at a time, until blended.

Switch to a large rubber spatula. Scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl then add the dry ingredients in 3 parts, stirring gently until they disappear and the batter is smooth. Stir in the carrots, nuts and raisins.

Divide the batter between the prepared cake pans. Bake until the tops of the cake layers are springy when touched and when a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean; 35 to 45 minutes.

Cool cakes in pans for 15 minutes then turn out onto cooling racks, peel off parchment paper and cool completely.

Frosting:

In a large bowl, beat cream cheese with a handheld mixer on medium speed until creamy, about 1 minute. Beat in the powdered sugar, a ¼ cup at a time until fluffy. Pour in cream, vanilla, and beat on medium speed for 1 minute.

When the cake layers are completely cool, frost the top of one cake layer, place the other cake layer on top. Decoratively swirl the top of the cake with remaining frosting. Scatter nuts on top.

Source: http://www.inspiredtaste.net

This blackberry cobbler has more of a cake-like topping. I used frozen blackberries, but use fresh when they are in season.(Photo: Juliana Goodwin)

Blackberry Cobbler

2 (16-ounce) bags of frozen blackberries or 2 pounds fresh

1 tablespoon tapioca

2 tablespoons corn starch

1 cup sugar

1 ½ cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

Pinch of salt

⅔ cup sugar

1 stick unsalted butter

1 ½ cups milk

2 teaspoons vanilla

Place blackberries in a cast iron skillet.

Stir together tapioca, cornstarch and 1 cup sugar. Pour the mixture over blackberries and toss until combined.

In another bowl, whisk together flour, ⅔ cup sugar, baking soda, and salt. Melt the butter in the microwave and whisk it in with the milk and vanilla. Pour over the blackberries.